Casey Anthony is almost universally reviled. Despite her acquittal, most people continue to believe that she murdered her young daughter, Caylee.
Her parents, George and Cindy, are tired of being viewed only as the parents of a monster. So they sat down for an interview with A&E.
Their discussion unfortunately become heated, and Cindy Anthony ultimately stormed off in anger.
George says that Casey and Caylee were there when he got home from work, but not every night.
“Most times, but a few times she wasn’t.”
He says that there were a few days at a time when his daughter and granddaughter would be missing when he arrived.
“Because that was a night she was supposedly going to spend a night with the nanny or one of her friends”
We all remember Casey’s fictitious nanny — the one named Zanny.
Zanny did not exist.
Cindy had misgivings about doing the interview from the start, and she becomes very obviously defensive a the suggestion that she did not know her granddaughter’s whereabouts.
Cindy speaks up.
“George, as far as Caylee goes, I knew when that child was not here.”
George agrees, but says:
“About six months before we saw a couple different times where she’d be gone for a couple of days.”
Cindy says that it wasn’t often, however.
“Casey and Caylee did not stay out for two or three days, I know that for a fact. Caylee was always here.”
Interviewer Elizabeth Vargas asks: “So Caylee never spent the night somewhere else?”
Cindy admits:
“Maybe one or two times, cause I wouldn’t go to bed unless I knew Caylee was tucked in.”
George tries to assure Cindy, from whom he had been in the process of getting a divorce when the couple learned that Casey was pregnant, that he’s not trying to antagonize her.
“Listen I don’t want to get upset with you, I don’t want to upset anyone anymore but I just now what I witnessed…”
This, however, is when another contentious issue comes up — one thankfully less upsetting than the murder of their granddaughter.
See, once upon a time, money went missing from Cindy’s purse. George was blamed.
George says that Casey is the one who stole the cash, which is something that everyone but Cindy has no problem accepting.
George also confesses that, at one point, Cindy allegedly stole money from Caylee’s savings account.
Cindy says:
“But George, Casey learned by example.”
This is when she storms off of the set. She blames him for Casey’s dishonest behavior.
“There was different things that I got the blame for,” George acknowledges at one point.
Cindy insists, however:
“No, but I’m telling you, you lied to me for several years.”
And she believes that there is a direct, causal link to Casey.
“And that’s where our daughter got it.”
He does not disagree, but Cindy goes on to try to give an unusual characterization of Casey.
“Casey was just a very spirited child. She had a lot of energy, she was just the light of our lives.”
Cindy continues, speaking of Casey’s youth, before she was one of America’s most hated people.
“She made people smile. Casey was very popular. She had tons of friends and lots of little boyfriends.”
We think that what Cindy is doing here is two things.
One, she is still having trouble grappling witht he knowledge that her daughter is a monster.
Two, she seems to be afraid that her granddaughter’s death was somehow her fault and wants to blame it on her husband.
Some people think that monstrous adults were monstrous children, but this is rarely the case.
We wish George and Cindy peace. They lost their granddaughter to an unthinkable act of evil.
